


it wouldn't be christmas without a dalek in the living room

by BookFangirlMaryJane



Series: TARDIS Advent Calendar Prompts [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: But I don't care, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hilarity, Humor, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, TARDIS Advent Calendar, Thoschei, this is a bit of a crack fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28019022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookFangirlMaryJane/pseuds/BookFangirlMaryJane
Summary: Stepping into the living room, the Doctor stops dead in her tracks. There’s a Dalek in the room and it’s staring right at her. She stares back.--o--TARDIS Advent Calendar (by Valc0), prompt for today is "Sorry, I didn't find a tree to decorate, here is a Dalek instead."Post-series 12 but no real spoilers.Slight crack. Possibly.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: TARDIS Advent Calendar Prompts [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2041429
Comments: 13
Kudos: 42





	it wouldn't be christmas without a dalek in the living room

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it's 1:50 am right now. Yes, I'm uploading a story. No, I have no control over my life anymore. Have fun reading.
> 
> Alright. This reads a lot like a crack fic but it wasn't supposed to? I don't know, I blame it on the characters. They have minds of their own and just made me do this.
> 
> This is post-series 12 but there aren't really any spoilers?
> 
> Oh, be warned, the Doctor curses once. Is that a thing you're supposed to warn for? I don't know. I'm doing it anyway?

Stepping into the living room, the Doctor stops dead in her tracks. There’s a Dalek in the room and it’s staring right at her. She stares back. It doesn’t move.

She fights down her first response (chucking an explosive at the blasted thing) and also stops herself from acting out her second response (snarling at it and screaming obscenities) to tentatively take a step closer.

Something is off.

The Dalek is lifeless, she realizes two seconds later. Its eyestalk is dark and a little drooping, out of power, and it’s not responding to her presence at all. Is it dead?

Quickly, the Doctor pulls out her sonic and scans it. Yes, dead. Just an empty shell.

She stands there for a moment longer, pulling her lower lip between her teeth. Dead Dalek in the living room. Alright. She’s woken to weirder things. She can… deal with this. Probably.

Okay, no, she can’t.

Why the **fuck** is there a dead Dalek in her living room? And who put it there?

**—o—**

“Did **you** put that dead Dalek in the living room?”

The Master looks up at her from his book and gives the Doctor a wide smile. “I did!”

When he doesn't seem to see the problem with that answer (and the whole situation, really), she slowly asks: “Alright, **why** did you put a dead Dalek into the living room?”

His excited grin makes her nervous.

“Well, you told me to get a Christmas tree for the TARDIS. And I looked everywhere. But I couldn’t find a good one, so I got something far better!”

“A dead Dalek.”

“A dead Dalek!”

The Doctor turns around, walks out the door into the corridor, breathes and steps back into the room.

“Okay, can you please explain your thought process on that decision? Did you think you could just waltz into the room and go _‘Sorry, I didn’t find a tree to decorate, here is a Dalek instead.’_? Did you… did you really think that was a **good** idea?”

He frowns at her. “Well, it’s dead. It can’t hurt anyone. And it’s got the perfect height for decorations! We won’t even need a ladder to reach the top.”

“It’s a **dead** **Dalek**!”

She realizes she sounds a bit hysterical but she really can’t help it right now. He brought her a **dead Dalek** instead of a **Christmas tree**. She has a right to be hysterical about that.

With an agitated noise, the Doctor pulls on her hair, closes her eyes and breathes. When she looks back at the Master, his expression is one of cautious nervousness. No glee, though, and she doesn’t think he gets why this is freaking her out so much.

“Should I… **not** have gotten a dead Dalek? Should I return it and we just don’t have a tree this year? I don’t mind.”

He clearly minds. She can see that he was really thrilled about his idea. That he wanted to surprise her, make her Christmas a good one. Their Christmas. Great.

“No, it’s… it’s alright. I was just... surprised. We can… decorate the dead Dalek.”

When his face lights up, the Doctor can’t help but let a little smile slip onto her lips, too.

“Great!” He closes his book with a snap and gets off the sofa. “Shall we start decorating it right now? I’ve never done that before but I **have** been curious about it. The guys at MI6 kept talking about Christmas decorations and all that. I didn’t see the value in it then, busy plotting my grand reveal and all, but…”

The Doctor watches him get all excited over the idea of decorating and feels her hearts ache for him a little. Never decorated a tree? Oh, she really should have invited him over for Christmas earlier than now. But how could she have? They’d been fighting, or she thought him dead, or he was destroying some planet or other. It just… never seemed to be the right time.

“Yeah, let’s decorate our Dalek-tree now,” she says with a smile, reaching for his hand and tangling their fingers together to pull him after her.

As they step into the hallway, the Master gives her a nervous look. “And you’re really alright with the dead Dalek? I just… All the trees I found were either too big or too crooked or too ugly. Not **one** of them was **perfect**.”

The Doctor leans in and kisses his cheek softly. “It’s okay. Really. Now that I think about it, a dead Dalek is far better than any Christmas tree. It’s very **us**. And hey, if we already have one of them over for Christmas, maybe the others won’t show up, too, right?”

He chuckles and pulls her close for a real kiss, soft and sweet and lovely and just this side of hot, and the Doctor kisses him back, revels in their closeness, revels in the fact that she can actually do this, that they’re here, in her TARDIS, not fighting and not angry at each other and, above all, that she can just kiss him like this.

Really, this has to be a Christmas miracle.

** The End **

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so I kept going back and forth between which of them would bring a DEAD DALEK as a Christmas tree, and while I certainly can see the Doctor do it, I couldn't resist the hilarity of it being the Master.
> 
> He feels a bit ooc but, well, I don't see him as being very Christmas-informed. He would end up getting a dead Dalek because 'it's basically the same thing as a tree, right, and hey, it's smaller, so you can decorate it better and it's dead, so why are you looking like that, Doctor? I made something nice. I killed a Dalek AND brought Christmas stuff home. Why're you not liking this?'
> 
> Aaah I hate titles. This one is really stupid but what else was I supposed to put there? I wanted it to sound poetry-y and mysterious but that's kinda impossible for this kind of prompt, I think.
> 
> The next story will probably come on the 15th. And then I kinda plan to write something every day up to the 21st. No promises yet for whether or not I'll manage it. But I really want to? The prompts are very nice.  
> (I already dread the one-in-the-morning writing sessions...)
> 
> I'm going to bed now...
> 
> Stay safe, everyone!!!


End file.
